I am (Un) Canadian: (A Middle of the Night Reflection from CAHPERD Conferences Past…)

2003, Vol.9, No. 3, pp. 77 - 78

I am (Un) Canadian:

(A Middle of the Night Reflection from CAHPERD Conferences Past…)

Joannie Halas University of Manitoba

I am not Joe.

I am not a Prairie farmer, a BC Lumberjack, a Maritime fisherman or a West Coast hippie. I do not dress in red and white.

I am Aboriginal, an Asian, an African, an immigrant.

A person of colour. A Muslim. A Jew.

A refugee.

I am not White.

I am the boy who throws like a girl.

The girl with two left feet.

I don't score five of five on a rubric.

I am not an athlete or a jock.

I am a fat kid. I am a freak. I have purple hair.

I am a teenage mom who loves to skip rope.

I am not on the honour roll.

I have no Logo to signal my acceptance.

I am not a mesomorph.

I am the North. The East. The West. And the South.

I am not a Christian.

I am the abused child, afraid to change for gym class

because Colonial scars mark my body in ways that others don't (want to) understand.

I am not comfortably middle class.

I am a faggot and a dyke. Transgendered. Undefined.

I am a gay presenter who dares to speak homophobia as PE teachers race out of the room.

I am (Un) Canadian 78

I am not heterosexual.

I am not able-bodied. The prefix "dis" is attached to my identity.

I am an outlier situated on the wrong end of the bell curve.

** * ***** *** * ******* ** * * *

I am the true colours missing in CAHPERD: The abject, the unwanted, the unwelcome.

** ** ** **

I am angry.

I am without hope.

I am heartbroken.

I am a burnt-out, struggling teacher whose distress is shunned in whispered judgements.

I am a conflicted professor feasting at a table of privilege and denial.

The activist too numb to act.

The anti-capitalist treading a swamp of complicity.

I am a drugged teenager who can't sit still.

A back of the school smoker banned from shooting hoops in the gym.

The child of a welfare cheat who has no runners to wear.

I am ugly. Unfit. Un-cool. Un-Canadian.

The wrong colour skin, the wrong body type, the wrong sexuality, the wrong class.

I am the wrong body.

I am all of these and more. And I ask:

When will the Spirit of CAHPERD celebrate me?

Looking ahead, I ask: Can a heart rate monitor measure the pain of my exclusion?